Revision as of 21:22, 31 March 2005

The last step of dispute resolution is a request for arbitration. Please review other avenues you should take. If you do not follow any of these routes, it is highly likely that your request will be rejected. If all other steps have failed, and you see no reasonable chance that the matter can be resolved in another manner, you may request that it be decided by the Arbitration Committee.

• Arbitration policy
• Past case precedents
• Administrator enforcement requested (shortcut WP:RFAr/AER)
• Developer help needed
• Standing orders
• Arbitration template
• Contact the Arbitration Committee

Please place comments on the talk page, not here.

Structure of this page

The procedure for accepting requests is described in the Arbitration policy. Important points:

• Be brief. Put a quick list of the nature of the complaints. Place the request itself on this page, rather than a subpage, but if you need to, link to detailed evidence in the standard template format elsewhere.
• You are required to place a notice on the user talk page of each person you lodge a complaint against. You should confirm this by providing diffs of the notification at the bottom of your complaint.
• Please sign and date at least your original submission with "~~~~."
• New requests to the top, please.

New requests

Template

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

Statement by party 1

Please limit your statement to 500 words

Statement by party 2

Please limit your statement to 500 words

Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (0/0/0/0)

User:Violetriga & User:Spinboy

Involved parties

User:Spinboy & User:Violetriga

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:British_Columbia_Liberal_Party http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=User_talk:Violetriga&diff=0&oldid=11713131

Statement by Spinboy

This admin unilaterally went and moved Liberal Party of British Columbia to British Columbia Liberal Party when there was no consensus, and then she had the audacity to waive my opposition with slight of hand by saying it wasn't strong enough. My reasons are my own for objecting to the move, and she shouldn't abuse her powers to move the article when no consensus had been reached.

Her comments can be seen at Talk:British Columbia Liberal Party and User talk:Spinboy.

--Spinboy 05:53, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Statement by violet/riga (t)

I don't see that this is any grounds for such action. The article was noted on Misplaced Pages:Requested moves by The Tom and Spinboy opposed with "A redirect will do the job just as well" . I agreed with The Tom's reasoning for the move and, having waited the 5 days that is usual for WP:RM, moved the article to the new name. Spinboy undid the move a few times (not fixing double redirects) without discussion or presenting a strong argument against it. To his credit he did back down in the end, but then suddenly brings this up. violet/riga (t) 13:41, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (0/3/0/0)

• Reject. 'He/She moved a page and I disagree' is insuffecient to warrant arbitration. You don't have to conduct a poll every time you want to move a page -- see also Misplaced Pages:Be bold. →Raul654 05:59, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)
• Reject, per Raul. Ambi 14:07, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Reject, as the other two. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 15:25, 2005 Mar 31 (UTC)

User:SchmuckyTheCat & User:Instantnood

Involved parties

User:SchmuckyTheCat & User:Instantnood

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=User_talk:Instantnood&diff=0&oldid=11635911

Statement by User:SchmuckyTheCat

I am making this request for Arbitration after spending the last two months in daily edit wars with Instantnood. I previously brought it up in an RfC which did not change his behavior. Mediation in this case would be unproductive.

I've thought about whether to take this drastic step for awhile. This evening he began reverting several hours of my organizational work because it did not agree with his agenda. I'm done trying to explain or be civil when he's violating the naming conventions he usually holds up in his defense.

Initial glob of evidentiary links: /Instantnood/Evidence

POV Instantnood is a Hong Kong patriot. He is using Misplaced Pages as a platform for advocacy. He often expresses this as a matter of presentation rather than direct content editing. He has mostly lost arguments in "list of xxx by country" to have Hong Kong included as an equal member with the People's Republic of China. His current front is to denigrate the People's Republic of China to a regional term "mainland China", a disputed term currently under discussion. By declaring the rest of China as "mainland China" instead of the People's Republic of China it again makes Hong Kong equal, in presentation, to the entire country. There are valid uses for the term "mainland China". The term does have it's supporters. However, Instantnood is using the term in extreme ways that push his POV. He uses the (disputed) naming conventions as backup, but even the disputed language says that "mainland China" should only be used in non-political contexts. When he edits articles about elections, laws, and political parties that appear in categories BY COUNTRY, he is creating a country of "mainland China" and deleting the country called The People's Republic of China.

Edit summaries Instantnood marks major and disputed changes, and even reverts, with "minor edit" even after being reminded on multiple pages and his talk page multiple times to not do this.

Revert wars Instantnood was warned about 3RR in an edit war with Huaiwei. Since then he has taken his reverts right up to three, but not crossed it. He is gaming the 3RR rule and treating it like an entitlement. There have been literally dozens of these miniature revert wars over the last few weeks.

Edit wars Instantnood involves himself in edit wars. This came out in the RfC against him even by people who approved of his edits. This has not changed.

Content Subterfuge Instantnood has created parallel articles and categories on several occasions. He has hidden controversial changes by hiding them with other edits.

Avoiding concensus As shown in the evidence about POV pushing, Instantnood has created or populated categories that are in parallel to established categories when concensus to move to his new naming scheme has yet to be approved and unlikely to ever be approved.

The most jarring episode of concensus avoiding, however, occurred on the articles about Hong Kong and Victoria City. Around the end of February and the beginning of March, it was the concensus of everyone - except Instantnood - that was editing those articles that Victoria City was not, in fact, the capitol of Hong Kong. Instantnood repeatedly reverted the articles to reflect his opinion that it was. A matter of fact should be easy to prove, and emails to the Hong Kong government, multiple times, even, proved that Victoria City was an antique term and was never, in fact, the capitol. Instantnood continued to question this until people ignored his discussion.

User Space/Recreation of Deleted Material Though this issue is resolved, it remains as damning evidence that Instantnood games the rules and cannot be expected to be a good citizen and interpret reasonable policies if it conflicts with his attempts to push POV. After losing the edit wars over the status of Victoria City as the capitol of Hong Kong, Instantnood copied "his version" of the articles to his userspace. That kind of preservation is absolutely OK. However, he left the categories intact specifically so that his alternative articles would be seen in parallel in the main wikipedia. He had to be told, specifically, several times, that it was NOT OK to do this before he finally accepted that he could not create a parallel universe inside his user space.

Assume good faith I fully admit to losing the assumption of good faith in Instantnoods edits. It has been apparent to me for a long time that he has an agenda. Even so, I have thanked him when he has improved my edits (for instance, by adding the Chinese characters for a name of a person or city). I realized that Instantnood lost good faith in me by his most petty of reverts. I found it quite common for him to revert me regardless of why I had edited some articles. In one instance, I realized that it was petty: 99 Ranch Market. A grocery store I regularly shop at when in the United States. It is an asian grocery store, it carries products from across the globe. I changed a link from "mainland China" to "China" because China is more encompassing, and Instantnood, who lives on the other side of the planet from the nearest 99 Ranch Market, reverted my edit, TWICE, and demanded evidence that this grocery store carries products from Hong Kong, asking "how do you know?"

Furthermore, when I presented emails from the HK government about the capitol city issue, Instantnood hounded me and insinuated that I even have made them up. I told him which website I went to and which links I clicked to get the answers, it was not like I had some inside source, yet he continued, even on the RfC page, to insinuate that I was hiding something.

Talk Pages/Rules of Engagement/Work towards a resolution/Filibuster The other large problem with Instantnood, is that he fails to give up gracefully. In a discussion, long past the point where he has exhausted his arguments, he simply turns around and repeats himself until the other side stops talking. At this point, he takes that as capitulation to his filibuster and makes the changes.

On occasions where he would be on the losing side of 3RR and there has been no talk page discussion, he simply adds various dispute templates to the articles. At first it was template:twoversions, lately it has become template:controversial. Special note: I keep changing his controversial tag to the disputed tag. In most cases where he adds the tags, he does not make a problem statement or attempt to resolve the dispute - to the frustration of other third parties who may not be aware of his overarching agenda to re-categorize anything China.

SchmuckyTheCat 04:18, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Statement by Instantnood

This is a content dispute, and this is not a dispute between two users. Many users are involved.

There are ongoing discussion across several discussion pages on Misplaced Pages, such as Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (Chinese). The issue has been put up on WP:RFC and Misplaced Pages:AMA Requests for Assistance by me.

The edit wars do not actually exist. I would say the situation was rather marginal. Although my username was listed onto WP:AN/3RR by SchmuckyTheCat, I did not violate the 3RR rule. I have not reverted more than 3 times (i.e. 4 times or more) in 24 hours.

I do not agree that a content dispute could be made an arbitration on a user. Rather, this should be an arbitration of the disputed content. I am looking forward to necessary assistance from administrators. Thanks in advance. — Instantnood 04:25, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

List of ongoing discussions:

• Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)#..of China or ..of the PRC → ..of mainland China
• Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)#NPOv: China, Mainland China, PRC, ROC, SAR, etc.
• Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)#NPOV
• Misplaced Pages:Categories for deletion#Category:Laws of mainland China
• Misplaced Pages:Categories for deletion#Category:Companies of mainland China
• Misplaced Pages:Categories for deletion#Category:Cities in mainland China — Instantnood 06:05, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

(Note: this list will be updated from time to time)

See also additional information regarding ongoing discussion on the issue among many users, and recent edits by SchmuckyTheCat. — Instantnood 06:05, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

Updates to Arb requests

Response SchmuckyTheCat 09:35, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Regarding the evidence and her/his latest response, I have responded at this section of the additional information to my statement. — Instantnood 11:09, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (0/0/0/3)

• Please provide direct evidence (i.e. diff links) of your claims. Ambi 11:13, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Sounds like a case to take, but please provide diffs to support the claims - David Gerard 13:48, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

/Instantnood/Evidence was created with the filing.

• Abstain pending response to allegations that this is a content dispute. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 04:45, 2005 Mar 30 (UTC)

Paul Beardsell

Involved parties

User:tkorrovi
Paul Beardsell
Personal attacks

Statement by User:tkorrovi

Artificial consciousness article was created by me in July, 2003. There were no problems until March, 2004, and several people edited the article. From March, 2004, Paul Beardsell started to edit it, and started frequent personal attacks against me, which have continued now more than a year. I acted in a civil way and never responded them with offenses, apologized when there were misunderstandings, but the attacks, and also lies with which he, and some others, which I cannot say how many of these were sock puppets, tried to give a bad impression of me to others, didn't stop.

In December, 2004, the mediation started by Cimon Avaro, a member of the Mediation Committee , but the mediation failed, Paul Beardsell reacted with more personal attacks on mediation page , in addition to personal attacks by others on Simon Avaro talk page.

The article's talk page is also unreasonably long because Paul Beardell et al forced talk about trivial issues, and often nonsese, seemingly trying to make everything concerning the article a nonsense, or hard to follow. He also tried to delete almost all the content of the article several times without discussion, and made several attempts to create a parallel article like [[Artificial consciousness according to Tkorrovi]] without my consent and with mostly not my text. He often reverts my changes without discussion or even explanation. There was also one NPOV label violation, putting label back without explaining, while all the requirements for removing the label required by the Misplaced Pages rules, were fulfilled . Considering all that I, and probably some others, were almost unable to edit the article in last months. He also added to article a nonsense, not related to the subject, like a text about disabled writer Christopher Nolan.

Personal attacks by Paul Beardsell (same as User:Psb777) against me on the article's talk page only (mostly negative personal comments):

Paul Beardsell was informed of this arbitration request at . Tkorrovi 13:27, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Statement by Paul Beardsell

Please limit your statement to 500 words

OK, I have found a short cut way of making a formal response and I think it is the only one I can really make in the circumstances: I cannot respond! The plaintiff does not say in a focussed way what he is complaining about and he does not say here what has prompted this arbitration request now, many moons after the events which seem to be the basis of his belated and his many FALSE allegations. I strongly suspect this is now prompted by my recent reversion and criticism of his ill-judged removal of some interesting content at artificial consciousness but who knows? In any event, this is the first crossing of swords between us for some time. Natural Justice demands that a complaint be timely. Not only does he not make a focussed and timely complaint, neither does he say what remedy he is seeking. There is therefore, in my opinion, no case to answer and nothing to arbitrate. I will not respond until a focussed complaint is made, one which I can address if appropriate. I do however submit, for the record, that Tkorrovi's submission here is mostly a typical misrepresentation of the facts.

Paul Beardsell 22:00, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I do this in bold so that at least I will be SEEN amongst all this verbiage. I cannot respond in 500 words to Tkorrovi's complaints. Indeed, it would take many 1000's of words to do so. I do not think his complaints should be allowed to stand as is and that he should be forced to make a cogent, focussed complaint - something I can reply to without having to take a fortnight off in order to compose the point by point rebuttal. Such a rebuttal will be simple to do, but will be very time consuming. If this complaint is accepted for arbitration (and I do not see why it should) then I must ask the members of the committee to refrain from taking a position BEFORE I can present my detailed rebuttal. And I will need a fortnight to prepare it. Paul Beardsell 03:46, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Commentary

I don't have time today to answer this properly. Not today. I note that one or two "arbitrators" are already starting to pass comment without waiting to read what I have to say. Paul Beardsell 20:34, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

They seem to be acknowledging that there's a situation - not that you're in any way to blame. Snowspinner 20:38, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

I disagree. My response may well be that there is no substantive case to answer. This arbitration request is just a resort to procedure by one who is unable to argue his points cogently in the article itself or on the article's talk page. Now, before anybody jumps into arbitration mode, I have NOT yet made my submission. So desist from commenting. Paul Beardsell 21:23, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please do not comment UNTIL I have made my submission. I am told I have a week. Is that correct? Paul Beardsell 21:25, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You're misinterpreting my response; I had intended to say that once the case has opened arbitrators will generally wait a week for the compilation of evidence before composing decisions. Votes on acceptance are not generally viewed to be restricted by time in any fashion. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 21:30, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)

You are not being clear. When must I make my response by? Paul Beardsell 21:33, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There is no set hard limit for a response; however filing a statement prior to, or during the first week of, a case opening is considered prudent. If you are going to file a statement, I suggest you do so as soon as possible. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 21:36, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)

Wait for other party to go on holiday. File complaint. Paul Beardsell 22:35, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If someone could point me at the pages where the mediation to which Tkorrovi refers took place and to the findings of the mediator I would appreciate it. Thanks. Paul Beardsell 22:34, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I believe the reference is to User talk:Cimon avaro/ArtConsc mediation. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 22:37, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)

Thanks. Paul Beardsell 22:49, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What does "accept" mean? That an arbitrator "accepts" that the case shall be dealt with here? Presumably not that the complaint is valid. So I have been reading up. The usual state of affairs is that those who performed the mediation would recommend (or not) a case for arbitration. Usually, says the docs on arbitration, not just any old case put forward by anybody is accepted. Mediation first. There was a mediation process in progress. Either it has been abandoned or a report has been made and I have not seen it. What has happened? Anyway: As you can see, my point is that there is no case for me to answer, so how can it be "accept"ed for arbitration? Paul Beardsell 01:30, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

"Accept" means the arbitrator has voted to open the case - four or more Accept votes by arbitrators will open the case. If, however, there is no evidence brought before the Arbitration Committee within approximately a week of the case opening, the case may summarily be closed. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 01:40, 2005 Mar 29 (UTC)

Important notice Paul Beardsell changed the text of this arbitration request submitted by me already second time -- the title , involved parties , previous time . I changed them back to the original . This arbitration request was submitted by me, and I change it only if the arbitrators ask me so, modification of other user's edits of Arbitration page are not allowed.Tkorrovi 23:58, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

While we wait for a statement from Paul Beardsell, do the Arbitrators agree to create the Evidence page now? Maybe it would also be easier for Paul Beardsell to write his defence in such more organized form, and the Arbitrators may start to look at the evidence.Tkorrovi 19:38, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Someone here should be taking charge of the presentation of evidence and should be ruling on who decides the title of the case and what the title is allowed to be. Further, the template does not allow for a short, pithy title to be inserted in the list of parties; but perhaps it should. But why should the plaintiff decide it? Paul Beardsell 21:18, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

2nd statement by Tkorrovi

My response to the comments by Paul Beardsell. Mainly, why I made an arbitration request now, and whether it is timely. The main reason why I made it now was that mediation on this case started in December, 2004, and did not produce results, I consider 3 months to be enough time to settle the dispute. That I submitted an arbitration request now, doesn't supposed to be a surprise to Paul Beardsell, because I said exactly that I shall do that when there are no other alternatives, during the mediation on the mediation page . And there clearly were no alternatives, because during the mediation Paul Beardsell not once said that he is going to change his behaviour any way, or is going to stop the personal attacks against me. Instead, he seemed to doubt in the necessity of mediation, and had no will to even start the mediation. And, in addition to that, he continued his personal attacks against me on the mediation page ("You remind me of that", with a picture of monkeys in a car, yelling to the passing pedestrians "Bastards! Homo Sapiens!", in the end of the page confirming that he meant me as a monkey "In the cartoon that is what the chatting pedestrians should do too"). This offense might been provoked by me ("I don't remember, I don't want to remember the bad things, I want to remember the good things. But now it was only as much important, that I found it necessary to archice the discussion and history, just as a precaution. But if one wants to see an offense by Paul Beardsell, now they will follow"), I did it only that time in order to find out whether Paul Beardsell's habbit to use personal attacks against me, anyhow changed, this was just the only thing I found possible to do in the condition of total unwillingness of Paul Beardsell to carry on the mediation.

Then my last hope of solving the case without arbitration was that maybe Paul Beardsell would finally change his aggressive ways of working with the article, at that time there was almost no activity on the article. Until recently, other people started to edit the article, and I found some changes necessary on definition (mainly, I didn't find it quite correct to state the AC is something which necessarily possess consciousness, it did not come clearly from the wording that it is also a study, and mentioning a myth of creating people by god immediately after it in my mind made the definition of the topic even more ambiguous). I made the changes, explaining them in the revision log . Then two days later, came Paul Beardsell, who edited the article last time in December 2, 2004, and there were more than 20 edits meanwhile. Paul Beardsell reverted my edit, mentioning only the Prometheus myth ("interesting and relevant historical point"), but made no comment on why he reverted the definition. I reverted the creation myth, asking him to explain, why the myth of God's creation of man is proper there, because it would fit there only when such myth in principle (no matter whether Greek, Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Babylonian etc) fits in that place for some reason, and why this would be more proper than some examples of early fiction, or attempts to create some equivalent of conscious entity by man. Also, without having his comment, I tried to guess the reason why he reverted my change of the definition, now considering how he usually treated me, I was in difficult situation. I wanted to change the definition more in accordance with the original definition of AC by Igor Aleksander (likely the first definition of AC), so that it would then be more appropriate, when this was the reason why he reverted my change. But unfortunately the definition by Igor Aleksander was not concise enough for the purpose, the full definition also being in two sentences, but considering the reactions of Paul Beardsell before, as he criticised me earlier not only for writing in the article a sentence written by me, but even a sentence based on a scientific paper, and worded by me, in order to achieve some kind of co-operation with him in these conditions, and in order to making possible to edit the article in these conditions, I was forced to write the definition exactly how it was in the paper, though it unfortunately was not concise enough for that place, and better were re-worded. But Paul Beardsell reverted all my changes. He did not explain the necessity of including the creation myth, in spite that I asked, stating more shortly the same which he stated earlier ("ancient history"). And concerning the definition, he stated "remove non-grammatical, non-sequiter addition by Tkorrovi which is UNFIXABLE". The definition was exactly copied from the paper "Artificial Neuroconsciousness: An Update" by Igor Aleksander, Professor of Neural Systems Engineering in Imperial College, London, and a former prorector of that college . Maybe the best description of this paper is the BibTeX entry , it was submitted to "International Workshop on Artificial Neural Networks" in 1995 (IWANN '95), as it was an accepted paper of the conference , and therefore it is considered peer-reviewed (in science the papers accepted by the organizers of the conference are reviewed before the acceptance, and therefore are considered to be peer-reviewed). If Paul Beardsell thinks that what Igor Aleksander writes is non-grammatical, then either he found something which people who publish the articles by Igor Aleksander did not find, or he has some different understanding of the grammar. As usual, he did not explain again. So, I did not find his reverting anyhow substantiated, and reverted the definition, but did not revert the creation myth, not because I found it appropriate, but just because I found the definition higher in priority, and in these conditions, with Paul Beardell acting so, I did not find it possible to constructively work on more than that. Later, other editors came, made more constructive edits, didn't just blindly revert, and understood better my intentions, at least the necessity of stating "Artificial Consciousness" as a study. So after a few months, when Paul Beardsell didn't edit the article, seeing his additude, behaviour, and unwillingness to co-operate the first time he did after that, I finally found that his additude did not change, and that his aggressive behaviour, including the personal attacks, is not likely to change in the near future. So I found that thre are no ways any more to avoid the arbitration, at that point.

These recent events were not the reason why I submitted the request for arbitration, but it was when I finally found that there are no other alternatives. The reason was that all other means to solve the conflict and to stop Paul Beardsell from using personal attacks against me over a period of time almost a year, were exhausted. Almost all the possibilities to resolve the conflict were tried, like vandalism in progress, request for comment etc, it's maybe the best to see that on "what links here" page of the article . I tried to use all other possibilities first, and hoped that acting in the most civil way, and not reacting to his attacks, would change his mind and solve the dispute, but it had no effect on him at all, rather I noticed that the frequency of his attacks increased with the time past. The reason why it took so long time, as much as I am concerned, is that such measures as arbitration are not the means I like, submitting this request was extremely unpleasant for me, but unfortunately finally necessary. If you notice, in science forums, and in irc chatrooms for scientific topics, where other than intelligent people never go, almost no banning happens (as it is very frequent in other topics, in some channels in irc you may get kicked out even if you say only hello), with intelligent people who can solve the disputes by other means, things never go that far. But in this case, unfortunately banning or other extreme measures may be necessary, as unfortunate and sad as it is.

(Concerning me, just to shortly introduce myself, I'm an Automatic Control engineer, and I maintain several Open Source projects in SourceForge (yes I made my real name public here, as well as Paul Beardsell did). In fact, the only thing which I know thoroughly about programming, is c89 ("ansi c"), I can do programming in c++, but I'm convinced that everything can be done in c89, while using right programming methods, and languages which become too complicated, like c++, may have the same faith as IBM's PL/I had, which was abandoned just because it was too complex.)

PS The title of this arbitration request was changed from "Paul Beardsell" to "Tkorrovi" by Paul Beardsell. I changed it back to the original , to be the same as it was when I submitted the request. Is changing the original initial text of the request for arbitration, which was submitted by another person, allowed by the person against who the request was made? And I re-confirm, that I made this arbitration request only against Paul Beardsell concerning his personal attacks and offensive behaviour. Arbitrators, please say if you consider that there must be any other title, otherwise I don't accept any other title.Tkorrovi 10:22, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

As I remember from previous interesting and sometimes amusing discussions with User:Tkorrovi, who works as a customs officer in Estonia, one of the most difficult issues was his own grasp of the English language. A subject like artificial consciousness needs careful and concise treatment, which it was not getting until Paul Beardsell came along to contribute to the article. Paul's pedantry no doubt got up User:Tkorrovi's nose, but in the interests of quality Paul persisted, and this led to the peception by some that Tkorrovi was a troll and the perception by User:Tkorrovi that others who enjoined in Paul's support were sock puppets. I can confirm that it was I, not Paul, who used the example of Christopher Nolan in order to falsify Tkorrovi's notion that consciousness had to be tested against the attributes of what he dubbed "the average human". It was my contention that Christopher Nolan, by being different from the average and unable to interact with humans in the usual way because he suffered from cerebral palsy was nevertheless a prize-winning author and therefore should be deemed conscious. At no time has Paul as far as I am aware resorted to the use of sock puppets and, knowing him to be a man of integrity as I do, I very much doubt he would do such a thing in this circumstance - surely being sufficiently confident of his contributions in his own name without the need of such an expedient. User:Tkorrovi claims that Igor Aleksander has some special place in the history and development of Artificial Consciousness. There is certainly no consensus in academic fields that Aleksander is the leading proponent. He is, however, much admired by User:Tkorrovi. I think it would be a waste of time for this to go to arbitration. Matt Stan 13:05, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, Matthew Stannard, you are a friend of Paul Beardsell (I think so, Paul admitted that, and I think you don't deny that either), and you were the other one who used personal attacks against me, together and in co-operation with Paul Beardsell. But this case is not against you, I sincerely hope that you improve your additude, and arbitration case against you would not be necessary.

Then I insist, you must add my name to the ticket for this arbitration, so that I can show that I too am unaware of what you construe as personal attacks. There have been attacks, sure, as there are in any argument and some games, but to claim correctly that there have been personal attacks, you must give an example, together with its context, unequivocally to show that there has been a derogatory statement about you, as distinct from what you do in wikipedia. I thought, incidentally, that the cartoon with the chimps in the car cursing humans was quite funny, and topical in the context of our discussions about artificial consciousness. I didn't interpret it as a slur on you, though I daresay I might have anticipated that you would not get a rather unsophisticated joke. I would say in your mitigation that your lack of comprehension of some of the subtler points made in argument has been cause of some mirth. But to laugh at someone (because they are funny without necessarily intending to be so) is not a personal attack either, just indicative that two people have different senses of humour. I have however always aimed to correct rather than castigate, but to have someone claim, using the authority of an English Grammar, that he was right when in fact he was wrong on some simple point of English usage did make me laugh. Matt Stan 23:33, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

First, during our discussion on Artificial consciousness article's talk page, I said you repeatedly, that my nationality is not relevant concerning editing that article, this concerns science, and some even state that scientists have no nationality, at least it is in no way relevant to science, especially the field we talked about. But in spite I, and even other users who came along, asked not to talk about my nationality, you continued to repeatedly emphasize it. Why you had to do that agains other person's will, if I don't want it to be mentioned, then I must have my reasons. I don't want my nationality to be mentioned because many problems are related to that nationality, like many Russians don't like Estonians, because Estonia broke away from their evil empire called Soviet Union, and did never want to belong together with Russia. Some Russians are deeply grieved because a loss of a part of their empire, and sea ports on the Baltic sea. Then, if some Russians with no good intentions happen to know that I'm Estonian, this may mean a trouble for me. You are probably not aware of all these problems, but you still should understand that mentioning a nation of people of certain nationality may cause problems to these people, and not to do that against that person's will, especially not in inappropriate for that places. And no, I don't work as a Customs officer in Estonia.

The next you say is a lie.

Concerning Christopher Nolan, this was an idea of both of you and Paul Beardsell, you both talked about it. Yes I don't deny that Christopher Nolan was a good writer, and therefore likely had some attributes of his mind even more developed than average human has, but including such very unrelated issues in the article, makes the article very obscure and out of topic, as I considered then, and what is reasonably understandable for any person who thinks seriously about the article. We may then as well talk about the pope John Paul II in the article, also undeniably a wonderful person, also suffering from disabilities, but you certainly understand that information about him should be in the other articles.

The point was simply to know how you defined "average human", a point about which I am still no wiser. Matt Stan 23:33, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Concerning different wordings which were discussed, it is a process of discussing the possibilities, which always happens, nobody can put everything right in the first attempt. "Average human" is probably not the best term, but yes I mentioned it then, there is nothing wrong in discussing things like that.

Igor Aleksander wrote probably the first definition of Artificial consciousness in my knowledge, he was the one who was at the beginning of Artificial Consciousness and Machine Consciousness. There are not so many scientists involved in Artificial consciousness, there are only a few dozen mentioned in Owen Holland's website, with only a dozen who wrote articles in Journal of Consciousness Studies, or other peer-reviewed journals. Igor Aleksander is one of the most prominent of these, though certainly not the only one. Yes he has some "special place" due to the issues he wrote about, but he is not exactly "much admired" by me, I talked about him when I found it relevant. Neither did I, or no one else claim that he is any leader in Artificial consciousness study, there simply are no leaders. But, please don't make this arbitration request a discussion about the article, it was frequently the habbit of both you and Paul Beardsell to initiate a long discussion, to hide a topic in some way unpleasant for you. I don't think that you necessarily plan to do it now, I just say that it is not desirable here because when it will happen, it shall become obvious. Please try to restrict your comments only to matters directly relevant to this arbitration request.Tkorrovi 15:04, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Matthew Stannard, please don't write your comments in the middle of other people's comments, you cause confusion with that, so that it would be difficult to see who wrote what. You would be included if arbitrators decide so, I made request against Paul Beardsell. "The point was simply to know how you defined "average human", a point about which I am still no wiser." I think that we shall not talk about that point here, again, the comments here should only be about the matters directly relevant to this arbitration request.Tkorrovi 01:00, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (4/0/0/2)

• Accept - this is indeed a full scale edit war in progress. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 15:29, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC) Waiting for Mr. Beardsell to have a say, per request. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 21:00, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC) Abstain for the moment to await an update from tkorrovi, if one is forthcoming. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 22:52, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC) Accept. I can fully see now some of the underlying causes of this dispute just by looking at the statements above. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 15:26, 2005 Mar 29 (UTC)
• Accept ➥the Epopt 16:06, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC) I'll suspend my "accept" vote briefly ➥the Epopt 00:01, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Abstain (for a reasonable amount of time) until Mr. Beardsell can make a comment. →Raul654 20:51, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)
• Accept Fred Bauder 01:16, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
• Accept. Ambi 11:52, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Accept. But I wish people took a blind bit of notice of the 500-word thing. - David Gerard 13:48, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Accept. Neutrality 15:37, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

Requests for Clarification

If you need to clarify the precise meaning of a previous decision of the Arbitration Committee, your request should go here.

User:Ger6, User:Nulla, et al

Based on my previous interactions with banned users User:Reithy and User:Libertas/User:Ollieplatt (same person), I have a strong suspicion that one of them is behind the current attempts to insert POV on Oliver North. For background see Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Reithy/Evidence and Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Libertas/Evidence. See this edit by Libertas/Ollieplatt for instance , and this example of Reithy's typical POV editing . Compare with the current version of Oliver North which is being inserted by Ger6, Nulla, and many other sockpuppets: . I'm requesting arbitrator/developer assistance in determining whether these users are sockpuppets of either Reithy or Libertas/Ollieplatt (some have already been banned for obvious violations of the username policy):

• User:Hairamerica
• User:Ulyssess
• User:Ger6
• User:Chucky45
• User:Winston88
• User:Tnuctnurgemetib - read backwards
• User:Kcocymkcusesaelp - read backwards
• User:Sllabymkciletibohr - read backwards
• User:Kcocymkcus - read backwards
• User:Lennywilliams
• User:Nulla
• User:Franklincomman
• User:Seabiscuits

Thanks. Rhobite 23:18, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

Being entirely too familiar with Libertas's M.O., I share Rhobite's suspicions. RadicalSubversiv E 05:46, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I would like to extend Rhobite's request to cover User:StanleyBirch, User:Arnold4Prez, User:Tacosmell, User:Gmyu, who have been engaging in POV edits to Laura Bush, George W. Bush, and Soviet Union. See WP:AN/I#Sockpuppetry at Laura Bush. RadicalSubversiv E 19:25, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

User:Robert Blair

The ArbCom recently decided upon the case of Robert Blair.

Since that time, there has been a significant number of edits by anonymous users on pages that Blair regularly edited. Many of these edits resemble Blair's editing style, though I have not yet amassed firm evidence for ban evasion.

Please would the AC a) advise on what actions should be taken if ban evasion is suspected, and b) make any changes or additions to the final decision, as they see fit? Jakew 14:13, 2005 Mar 20 (UTC)

Comments by Arbitrators

• If a ban is evaded through use of a sockpuppet, the appropriate action is to indefinitely block the sockpuppet account and notify the arbcom such that the ban timer is reset. If such actions continue for an extended period of time, file a request with us. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 15:15, 2005 Mar 20 (UTC)
• Concur with Grunt. Could we get a sockpuppet check from David? Ambi 23:50, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Probably not - I can only check back a week. Would need dev assistance. In the meantime, shoot the sock - David Gerard 21:47, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Agree, admins should block socks as soon as they are sure about them. Non admins should post any evidence they have (such as editing styles) on WP:AN/I so that an admin can take the necessary action. Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 08:52, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Shoot the socks on sight, sanity-check with WP:AN/I. Robert Blair's editing style is, uh, pretty distinctive - David Gerard 10:59, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

User:Iasson and User:Faethon

(CC to Misplaced Pages talk:Requests for arbitration/Iasson)

There is currently an injunction in place against User:Iasson forbidding him from editing any deletion-related article.

Does this injunction also apply to User:Faethon and his sockpuppets? Faethon is still claiming to be a separate entity from Iasson. User:Aeropus II of Macedon (A Faethon sockpuppet) made an anonymous vote on Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/The Tetragrammaton in the Bible , and is apparently using, as his defense, the fact that he is not User:Iasson to get around the injunction. history

For the purpose of dispute resolution when there is uncertainty whether a party is one user with sockpuppets or several users with similar behavior they may be treated as one user with sockpuppets. Although I contend that Faethon et al display similar behaviour to Iasson, I would like to ask for arbitrator clarification to see if the injunction also applies to the Faethon accounts, and to the Acestorides & the List of Greeks accounts. --Deathphoenix 20:19, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This may be a moot point now because User:Aeropus II of Macedon is blocked for being a public account. --Deathphoenix 23:33, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Comments by arbitrators

• I see it's currently in play on WP:AN/I. If it's not seriously disputed, common sense (the identical behaviour, the public account status) would be enough for shooting on sight to be reasonable action in good faith IMO - David Gerard 17:55, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• What David said is true, but the public accounts can be shot on sight anyway. Ambi 11:54, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Matters currently in Arbitration

/Template

• /Rex071404 3 - Accepted with five votes and two recusals on 27 March 2005. Evidence to /Rex071404 3/Evidence, please.
• /GRider - Accepted with five votes on 26 March 2005. Evidence to /GRider/Evidence, please.
• /John Gohde v. Snowspinner - Accepted with five votes and two recusals on 26 March 2005. Evidence to /John Gohde v. Snowspinner/Evidence, please.
• /RJII - Accepted with six votes and two rejections on 23 March 2005. Evidence to /RJII/Evidence, please.
• /William M. Connolley - Accepted with four votes and four rejections on 22 March 2005. Evidence to /William M. Connolley/Evidence, please.
• /Everyking 2 - Accepted with four votes and one recusal on 20 March 2005. Evidence to /Everyking 2/Evidence, please.
• /Iasson - Accepted with six votes on 20 March 2005. Evidence to /Iasson/Evidence, please.
• /Netoholic 2 - Accepted with four votes and three recusals on 20 March 2005. Evidence to /Netoholic 2/Evidence, please.
• /WHEELER - Accepted with six votes on 9 March 2005. Evidence to /WHEELER/Evidence, please.
• /172 2 - Accepted with four votes, one rejection and four recusals on 6 March 2005. Evidence to /172 2/Evidence, please.
• /Baku Ibne et. al. - Accepted with four votes on 4 March 2005. Evidence to /Baku Ibne et. al./Evidence, please.
• /RK 2 - Accepted with five votes and one recusal on 16 February 2005. Evidence to /RK 2/Evidence, please.

Please also see Template:ArbComCases.

Archives

• Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Completed requests
• Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Rejected requests

• Misplaced Pages dispute resolution